GOLDEN,
Colorado — Lockheed Martin carried out a second test flight of a prototype
reusable launch system on Aug. 12 at the proposed site of New Mexico's
Spaceport America outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico.
While the
200-pound (91 kg) vehicle reached its planned altitude — roughly 1,500 feet
(457 meters) — the craft went out of control and was seriously damaged, beyond
reusability.
Liftoff
of the proprietary winged craft took
place in the early morning hours at the site, zipping up a launch rail
under its own power and headed skyward.
The rocket
plane flew some 12.5 seconds of a planned flight of less than a minute before
experiencing the in-flight anomaly, said Al Simpson, acting director, Advanced
Programs, Human Space Flight for Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, near
Denver.
"We're
investigating right now...to ascertain what happened. That's the research and development
nature of what we're trying to do," Simpson told SPACE.com. "We're going
to go off and look and see what happened and then crank that back into our next
flight," he said.
Fully
autonomous vehicle
The
self-propelled vehicle was flown
last December from the same launch area — a test effort that is being done in
partnership with UP Aerospace of Highlands Ranch, Colorado.
Simpson
said the name of the project, as well as the craft's propulsion system remains
under wraps at this time. The vehicle flown in December and now this month is 8
feet (2.4 meters) long with a wingspan of about 6 feet (1.8 meters), he noted.
Several
new test objectives were involved in the vehicle's second flight, specifically
in the arena of autonomous flight and avionics, Simpson said.
"This
is a fully autonomous vehicle. We're working the autonomous liftoff, control
and landing aspects of the vehicle," Simpson explained. When the craft departs
its launch rail, there's no human in the loop, with the flight hardware sensing
its environment, including winds, to guide itself on a pre-loaded trajectory to
touchdown.
For
this experimental launch, Spaceport
America officials had prepared a dirt landing location. But once the rocket
plane diverted from its intended path, Simpson said, it plopped down about
one-half mile down range — within spaceport grounds.
"We
have another vehicle that's nearly ready to go. We'll learn from Tuesday's
flight and take corrective actions," Simpson said. "Although we didn't like the
end result, we learned a lot and will crank that into the next flight and keep
going – that's my message."
Flies
like a rocket, lands like a plane
Simpson
said that the vehicle flies like a rocket but lands like a plane. The roughly
one-fifth scale rocket plane is being flown to evaluate techniques and
procedures for responsiveness to quick launch, ease of operations, and low cost
access to space.
Regarding
the scaling up of the craft, Simpson said that he and his team want to take one
more step by the end of next year. "The philosophy is to test a little, fly a
little...and buy down the risk" in a venture to address the nation's needs for
responsive, low-cost access to space, he said.
Ultimately,
the autonomously controlled, sub-scale unpiloted space plane project is
intended to lead to the fielding of a larger-scale system, one that lowers the
price tag of lofting satellites into Earth orbit.
At the
end of 2010, early 2011, Simpson added, project officials want to amass a body
of data from the test shots that would be available to say "should we go
forward and 'operationalize' something like this?"
"The
theme here is trying to do something a little bit differently than the 10-year
development program," Simpson concluded.
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